Francis Bacon
Study for Portrait (Pope)

1957
Oil on canvas
152,5 x 116,5 cm
The Lambrecht-Schadeberg Collection
© The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2021

Francis Bacon's most important works include a series of paintings he painted after a portrait of Pope Innocent X by the Baroque painter Diego Velázquez, more precisely after a black and white reproduction of the painting. Here the Pope has a distorted face with his eyes closed. The arms raised with the clenched fists signal the ambivalent feelings of a person who is trapped in the dark and has little sovereignty – the exact opposite of a papal portrait of a ruler.